These songs were made for you and me

Four South Florida songwriters offer wildly different takes on Independence Day.

June 29, 2012|By Dan Sweeney, Correspondent

Favorite gig: “This is back when I was living in L.A. It was Thanksgiving weekend, and everyone I knew was out of town, off celebrating with their families. But I got this opportunity to play out in Pasadena. I was a little nervous, I hadn’t played a lot of these songs live before, and certainly not solo. But I got up there and I played really well. The crowd was really into it. It was just a great show. And it really showed me that I can play these songs in a room full of strangers and people will be interested in them. Kind of an eye-opening experience for me. … Not long afterward, I played when all of my friends were there, and it was awful.”

Song: "Independence Day." "Ashes fall on Independence Day," Horgan sings, "Ashes wash away." Almost lost amid swirling, Johnny Marr-style guitars and layers of vocals and strings, the magic phrase shows up about halfway through this tune filled with love, regret and doubt. The themes, regular ones for Marr's band, the Smiths, make Horgan's guitar work all the more apropos. Independence here is worry over lost independence, the shackles that come with being tied down.

Scarecrow Jenkins

Age: 32

Hometown: Lake Worth

Bands: In chronological order, a 10-piece ska band called the Double Agents, Teenage Frankenstein, Dooms de Pop and Viva le Vox (concurrently) and Los Bastardos Magnificos and the band he leads, the Loxahatchee Sinners Union (currently, and concurrently). He also played guitar and bass in the punk-rock band Protagonist off and on for years.

Albums released: Two with Lake Worth freak-folk-scene godfathers Viva le Vox, and a just-released album with the Miami-based outlaw country act Los Bastardos Magnificos. Additionally, the Loxahatchee Sinners Union has an album recorded and ready for release.

Fun fact: The Loxahatchee Sinners Union just ended a tour in which it played 28 shows in 27 cities in 31 days. The journey had its highs and lows. "Nashville sucked," Jenkins says. "But Nashville always sucks. Don't ever go to Nashville. We had a better time playing on the street in Nashville than we would have in any club. The club there expected us to work the door, pay out of pocket for the sound guy. … We played a great show in Queens. That didn't seem to be the band's favorite, but one of mine. Augusta, Ga., was great, too. Really rowdy, lots of hootin' and hollerin'. Afterward, we ended up staying at this woman's house who sang for James Brown for 15 years till he died. She was just full of stories."

On songwriting: “There is a process, though it’s not necessarily very formulaic. Basically, I’ll sit alone at night and wait for something to happen. If I had to communicate to somebody who doesn’t write music, I'd say it’s a lot like fishing. Some days, you sit there next to the lake, you’re there all day long, and you don’t get a nibble. And on some nights, it’s like – bam – you get a hit. And you don’t know what it is till you reel it in. You don’t know whether it’s a good song or a bad till you finish it. And some nights are music nights, some nights are lyric nights. And eventually, I just mix and match.”

Favorite gig: “My first show with the Loxahatchee Sinners Union stands out in my head. It was nerve-racking in a hundred different ways. After Viva le Vox, a lot of people wondered what I was up to. And once people heard that I got a band, people were curious, so we had a really good turnout. So I felt a lot of pressure not to let people down who had seen my stuff before. It was also the first time I had set foot onstage as the leader of a group, and the first time I set foot onstage with someone I was dating. And it couldn’t have gone better.”

Song: "Independence Day." Like a long-lost track from "A Nightmare Before Christmas," or the soundtrack to a carnival of the damned, Scarecrow Jenkins' song combines accordion and brooding vocals to haunting effect. A solo that sounds as though it were played on bent chimes only adds to the dark atmosphere. The lyrics seem to relate the story of a dead man asking a lost love to forget him, telling her that "these things to which you cling so hard are gone." We know it's more than a simple breakup when the man sings, "I now stoke the lonesome flames of hell." Independence, then, is the ability to be free from the past. It all ends with, "Banjo casting echoes ever cold/Your songs of independence on this day."

Shauna Sweeney

Age: 27

Hometown: Lake Worth

Band: None; Sweeney generally performs solo

Albums released: A demo in 2007 and the full-length "Catch the Light" in 2010

Fun fact: Sweeney is known for hosting open-mike nights at which many singer-songwriters have tried out their work onstage for the first time. Her longest-running event has gone on for four years at the King's Head Pub in Sunrise on Tuesday nights.

On songwriting: “I have had a lot of different approaches, a lot of different ways that songs have sort of found me. I compare songwriting to dreaming. You don’t really know where all these ideas come from, and they don’t always make sense right away, but you think about them and let them simmer a little bit and they turn into something more cohesive.”

Favorite gig: “We played SunFest two years. That was amazing.”

Song: "Let It Wave." Of the four songwriters, Sweeney opted for the most-direct route, writing a song about the expansion of freedom in the United States, from the historical fights for universal suffrage to the current battles over gay marriage. Earnest and forthright, her song shows how far we still have to go in America, but also just how far we've come. As she sings, "We all have had our Independence Day."